The common theme throughout the stories is of disruptively close encounters with the “other.” At the Key West Literary Seminar in 2012, Oates gave a talk titled ‘Close Encounters with the Other’ and about this collection she described how “There comes a time in our lives when we realise that other people are not projections of ourselves - that we can’t really identify with them. We might sympathize or empathize with them, but we can’t really know them fully. They are different and they are opaque.”
In the stories of Beautiful Days, characters seek to connect with those of the other world, which often tragically break down. These encounters are a portrayal of the earthly beings' very personality - unhappy wives, broken friendships, lonely aged fathers and many more living souls seeking validation and completeness from the unknown. The characters’ issues are romantic intention, gender, age, race, class, education and nationality. Oates creates a wide variety of situations and richly complex characters to show the intense drama that arises from clashes surrounding these subjects.
Fleuve Bleu
Fleuve Bleu is about trust and the durability of love within romantic affairs or long-term marriages. In ‘Fleuve Bleu’ two married individuals initiate an affair with an agreement that they will maintain complete honesty and transparency. . Yet there are fundamental issues left unsaid which motivate one individual to abruptly bring their affair to a halt. Here descriptions of the environment strikingly emote the passion of their connection and erotic encounters.
Caption partly adapted from OatesFanBlog
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